Good day, Leaders,
I trust that you all slept well last night. If you did not, my sincere apologies.
I myself did not sleep too well, have not since the early morning hours of November 7.
A mere day following the Presidential election of 2024, one of the most intense and historic since 2020.
Many people throughout the country have had a baggage of emotions after the news of Donald Trump’s victory.
I have spoken to numerous friends the day we received the news, and all were distraught over the loss of Kamala Harris.
“I’ve never felt more despondent,” one of my friends told me over the phone. “I don’t know what to do here.”
Some are planning to leave the country once Trump takes his seat in the White House, an attempt to escape the threat of his laws looming over their heads.
It is a devastating day to many communities and members of the Democratic Party. I myself am a member of some of the communities that Trump means to target.
My mother and grandmother are immigrants that have been here for over 20 years, and I am first generation American. Both my mom and I are members of the LGBTQ+ community. I am a Mexican-Armenian teen.
Above all, I am a bigender woman, whose own rights and those of her family and friends are staring up the barrel of a gun.
Our rights have been challenged for over 100 years, numerous movements rising and falling to get our rights, only for them to be taken away.
The suffragettes didn’t march over the streets of the 50 states just for a teenage girl in Texas to die after being denied a miscarriage.
The Brown Berets (A Chicano movement in the 60’s) didn’t protest the government of the United States just for people to get shot trying to cross the border in hopes of attaining a brighter, better life.
Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera didn’t jumpstart the first Pride Parade in 1970, only for trans, nonbinary, or genderqueer people like myself to be restrained from expressing ourselves unapologetically.
Today is a sad day for many in our country.
Beneath the cheers and celebrations of those firmly with red, there are desperate cries from the blue.
-Kiara Granillo
Leaders Senior